Lidar and Beam Steering Technologies Based on Silicon Photonics

In the past few years, we went from the ability to miniaturize a handful of optical components to being able to print massive optical circuits on a microelectronic chip composed of thousands of optical components. These optical circuits enable one to control the flow of light in unprecedented ways and are opening the door to applications that only a decade ago were unimaginable, including solid state lidar on a chip. I will provide an overview of recent advances and challenges in the field and discuss emerging silicon photonics technologies for achieving low power wide beam steering in 2D.